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Posts Tagged ‘Chez Lucien’
Chez Lucien, Sunday night
Overhead fans are rotating at different speeds and a 65 year-old man, looking for friends, wanders from bar stool to stool.
He’s holding a pint of beer and telling jokes that he memorized 40 years earlier. He puts a song on the jukebox and goes over a couple sitting at the bar.
They’re both in their mid-50’s, and have likely been driven indoors by the rain that’s plaguing the jazz festival. The old man puts his hands on their shoulders–a beneficent presence– and begins to sing along to the jukebox—It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s a serenade, a gift to the lovers.
The woman wears a t-shirt the colour of jewelry, of perfume. The man drinks from a rock glass, the festival pass swinging from around his neck. They’re happy with themselves, that they were selected for a song, that they were cool and charitable enough to indulge the old man as he teetered around them. The old man slaps them on the back, releasing a smoker’s laugh, and moves on to the next person.
They both watch him as he leaves. The man puts down his rock glass and runs the back of his hand over her cheek, down the side of her neck, his fingernails lingering on the spot where skin meets shirt and her cleavage disappears into suggestion. She’s staring into him, exactly like she’s supposed to.
A younger couple, but not that much younger, come arm and arm into the bar. Dripping wet, they shoot tequila, swagger like cowboys back into the night, the sounds of jazz echoing through the parking garage across the street.
Michael Murray also blogs at: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
Chez Lucien and The Manx
Waiting for friends at the Manx on a Friday night, I realized that the place has always had a knack for making me feel either very included, or very excluded. Sometimes, I walk in and am swept up into things, becoming a part of an ever- expanding table full of people in excellent moods. On nights like these—with a three pint buzz– everybody seems witty and at the top of their game, and I feel like I’m at a terrific party where I’m making all sorts of brilliant friends.
The Manx is one of the undisputed arts hubs of the city, and all the people who work there carry with them a sort of hipster celebrity. They’re not waiters, they’re artists and musician and poets, and I always find myself hoping for their approval, which is an utterly demoralizing thing to realize.
The bar itself was designed to facilitate conversation. There are no TV sets, nor is there any ambient music playing, save for the fuzz of death metal pushing out of the kitchen. If you’re there on your own, there are no distractions from your solitude, and looking around at the clubby atmosphere, it can be easy to feel like a customer sitting amongst a bunch of friends. When this happens, I always feel needy and awkward, like the last person being chosen in a game of pick-up basketball.
Chez Lucien, on the other hand, was designed to be a safe haven for people who are used to feeling that way. It’s just off the beaten path, and it’s simple in its’ ambition. It’s not seeking to consciously establish a home for the Ottawa arts community, but to provide a place for black sheep to go and have a drink. There’s an effortless honesty and lack of inhibition to the place, and you never feel judged there. While The Manx may make talking easy, Chez Lucien actually makes being comfortable there easy, and in the end, that’s why it will always be my most trusted port in the storm.
Michael Murray also blogs here: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
